Welcome to iRunFar’s first prediction contest for The North Face Endurance Challenge 50 Mile Championships! The North Face is providing an incredible prize package with great prizes going to the top-five entrants as well as three random entrants! Read on to learn how this contest works, to see what you can win, and to enter the contest. Ps. Are you looking to win something? Currently, we’ve got three giveaways with almost 400 items up for grabs between them: one, two, and three. Enter now! The Basics* What you need to do is simple. Pick the top-five men and women in the order you think they’ll finish in this year’s TNF EC 50. That’s it. The winner will be chosen as follows:

Inexact Top Finisher Picks – The first round is judged on the number of each contestant’s picks (up to 10) that show up anywhere in the top-five men or top-five women. In other words, a contest entrant gets 1 point for picking a top-five woman or man who finishes in that range regardless of position. The contestants with the most points in Round 1 move to Round 2.

Exact Top Finisher Picks – Contestants who moved on are now ranked by the highest number of exact matches (i.e., a contestant gets a point only when their second-place pick finishes exactly second).

Top-Down Perfection – If a tie remains between two or more contestants, the winner of that tie will be determined (a) first, by the number of correctly predicted first-place finishers (men and women), (b) if a tie remains, then by number of correctly predicted seconds, (c) and so on with random draw being the last resort tie breaker.

We’re excited to announce that this prediction contest is open to everyone, no matter where in the world you live! The contest will close at 6 p.m. PDT on Thursday, December 5. To follow all of our TNF EC 50 coverage, subscribe to iRunFar via RSS or via email. In addition, following us on Twitter will insure that you receive all of the live coverage we provide before, during, and after the race! The PrizesAs noted above, The North Face is providing great prize packages to the top-five contestants in this prediction contest, as well as three random winners. We’ll make sure the prizes get to the winners, no matter where they live. Here are the prizes!* Prediction Contest Winners

(* With so many prizes, it’s possible that we won’t be able to fulfill every prize exactly. If TNF cannot provide a provide a listed prize in the desired size, they and we will make sure you end up with a great substitute!) The Contest [Update 12/5 6 p.m. PDT: Entry into this contest is now closed.]Prediction Contest Results Well, late-season illnesses and injuries sure made this contest more difficult than most, with the men’s side especially incapacitated. Only two entrants, Nick Clark and Scott Wolfepredicted seven of the top five men and women. Nick Clark had two place picks exactly right — Michele Yates for the women’s win and Emelie Forsberg for third — while Wolfe had no picks exactly correct, so Clarkie is our winner. Each of the top five participants will receive the prizes noted above.

Honorable mention: Rachel Clattenberg for picking 6 Top 5ers with 3 exact picks, but coming up third in the tie-break. There are also three random winners. Congrats to each of them!

Dennis Mui

Calum Neff

Jessica Bargo

Full Results

*The Details Only one entry per person. If you enter early and wish to change your picks before the deadline, you may replace those picks–please just use the exact same name and email address on subsequent entries. We suppose you don’t need to make all 10 picks, but be aware that a non-pick won’t help you win. You can only choose a runner once. No hedging bets, finding loopholes, or other funny business–we reserve the right to invalidate any entry that doesn’t follow in the spirit of fairness. The Hints In an effort to help you, the iRunFar reader, make the best picks, we have previews and insight that could aid you in your selection. However, you’ve got to do the reading on your own…. and we’d recommend it, as some top ‘entrants’ will not be running the race. That’s the only hint we’ll give here.

We’ll also be publishing pre-race interviews, check out the previews for links to the interviews.

The Closing If you want to talk through your ideas before making picks, go for it. For those wishing to go public on their predictions, please leave some or all of your picks in a comment after making your official selections. Go ahead, put your mouth where your mind is! Want to talk some smack about your predictions… we welcome it! If you enjoy what iRunFar provides, consider becoming a fan of iRunFar on Facebook or subscribing by the methods noted above. [Editor’s Notes: As always, a special thanks to Mitchell Goodman for once again being the brains and brawn behind this contest. There would be no contest without him. Also, props to the VHTRC Bull Run Run Pick-the-Winner contests of yore. My enjoyment of those contests gave rise to this contest.]

Thanks for the feedback. While I would disagree that logging in is a "real pain," I do appreciate the feedback. I avoided any type of log-in system for almost seven years as I didn't want an iota of effort needed to comment other than typing the comment.

I'm not sure if recent content is indicative of how dissuasive a log-in-only comment system is as certainly types of content do or don't get comments, while late-October and November is typically the quietest time of the year on iRunFar. Still, I'll keep my eyes open to see if a few particular articles this week do or do not get comments in line with what they've seen in the past. That said, shear volume of comments isn't my goal and the log-in system has largely provided it's primary intended benefit… a much more civil discussion platform. :-)

Wow! What a lineup! Most competitive race yet! Will it be a Krar/Jones battlefront, or will Miguel scoop up a third win!? And then throw in Sage and Max! I'm getting dizzy just thinking about it! Totally crazy lineup, the win could go any which way! Hardest prediction yet! But Dakotas been doing intervals!!??

Thanks, Mobius. For some reason, the list we uploaded did have Timothy's (or Dave James's) gender listed, so while both were in the database neither showed up on the list of contest options. Should be good to go now.

Tropical John …. A little off topic but since you are the one with the stacked field at LS50 every year have you thought of adding a 100k to augment the 50m? It seems like the area has plenty of great single track to allow for an extended version and it would be fun to see the elite guys race an extra bit ….Thx

we looked at all sorts of distances when we first started the 50 miler, but there's no good way to get 12 more miles without making the route pretty contrived. It lays out very nicely for 50 miles as an out-and-back.

Having said that, the current trail system exists only around the southern arm of the lake. The northern part is even larger, but no trails. If they ever build a perimeter trail around the northern arm, it might work out as a 100K point to point, which would be very cool. We've broached the subject, but with their current budget it's pretty much a non-starter.

Sage was a close second in first place voting and the most common second-place pick. Lots of folks picks will be affected, but it's only one runner. We only learned he was out 20 minutes before the contest closed. I was glad I'd not made my picks yet! ;-)